Into the Unown: Improving location-based gamified crowdsourcing solutions for geo data gathering

Augmented future: tracing the trajectory of location-based augmented reality gaming for the next ten years

“…7 The social dimension of LBGs has become an integral part of their success, as the games now scaffold social interaction both online and in-person. 15 , 17 LBGs such as Pokémon GO also strongly feature user-generated content in the form of players submitting and reviewing points of interests (PoIs) for the game, 29 and since the summer of 2023, now also having the possibility to create walkable paths for others, called Routes. Social playing is emphasised on various levels: there are social in-person gatherings, 17 online discussions about the game, 61 coincidental meetups with strangers and motivation to leave one’s house with follow-up potential for meeting and interacting with others.…”

“…Already today, we notice a few key differences in how LBGs make use of available map data. 1 , 4 , 29 One such difference is in how contemporary popular LBGs connect in-game points of interests (PoIs) to real-world locations or not. 1 For example, games such as Jurassic World: Alive and Dragonquest walk contain generic PoIs that are pseudo-randomly distributed across a real-world map, whereas games such as Pokémon GO and Ingress (see Figure 2 ) have most of the in-game interactable PoIs connected to real-world objects and locations.…”

“…Seeing the emergence of 3D map tiles, we argue that LBGs will not only adopt but be integral in the creation of the third dimension. This is already hinted at in the popular location-based game developer Niantic adding object scanning features in their games Pokémon GO and Ingress 29 where users take a series of images of points of interest, which are then used to create 3D models of said objects. We believe true 3D experiences (including indoor gameplay) hold great potential in LBGs and will emerge more broadly as the technology evolves.…”

“…We have government bodies and organisations providing a large variety of open data, and it appears to be only a matter of time before LBGs make better use of the available resources. The seventh thesis links to trends in crowdsourcing 29 , 70 , 72 where LBGs have recently been harnessed to collect real-world data. This is an important potential benefit of playing LBGs, and we see it likely that this element will be leveraged more in upcoming years.…”

“…Through the location-based gameplay on their smartphones, players have the possibility of scanning nearby single trees or whole forested areas, effectively collecting real-world spatial information ( 29 , 70 ). The collected scans are, in turn, used to generate the game world, adding new digital twins of real-world trees to the PC version of the game.…”